Saturday, October 8, 2011

Farms & Animal rights activists

In my area I seem to have a larger-than-normal number of fairly militant animal rights proponents. For me, that means that I get contacted by the snohomish county animal control about once a month about some darned thing.

They actually get a lot more calls than that, but resolve them by coming to the farm gate and looking at whatever the complaint is. Here's some of the most recent complaints:
pigs don't have water (I have installed two types of automatic waterers. Here's one, and here's the other)
Sheep are standing in the rain.
Pigs are standing in the rain.
Pigs are in mud
Dogs are unlicensed (my three farm dogs, that is)
Dogs are in the stock trailer
Sheep can't reach the water (water is popular, see above)

I don't fault snohomish county animal control at all - they're required by law to respond to every complaint,and they do actually check out whatever it is. When they can't see what they need to from my fenceline I will take them over and let them look at whatever it is, but this takes time out of the day. They're nice enough about it, but it's annoying.

In addition I get a variety of notes left on the farm gate. Most of the folks are looking to buy something, but I get the occasional angry note from someone about something.

I'm not the only one. Michelle, over at the collie farm blog, has had various issues with people about her livestock guardian dogs. Here's one example, and another, and another.

What's been surprising about this latest case is that people are saying things in the comments of various articles that dog kennels are inhumane and electric fences are inhumane, which should come as a surprise to anyone who raises animals on pasture. I had no idea.

1 comment:

That news report about the stolen dog freaked me out too- the fact that the woman stealing the dog knew so little about dogs that it didn't occur to her to take off the invisible fence collar before yanking the dog through a shock and panicking it, and the dog looked absolutely traumatized by the "rescue" in the video, and so happy when reunited with its owners. Sheez, and she thought she was doing the dog a favor?